Musclebound
by Dailbc
Summary: A drabble about Severus reminiscing and struggling with his demons in a muggle gym.


_Re-written to include a few more ideas. A drabble about Severus reminiscing and struggling with his demons in a muggle gym. Given his muggle dad and the working class area he grew up in I've always thought that he would have had other, more feral friends, than just Lily in Cokeworth. And ones likely Lily would have disapproved of. There wouldn't have been much entertainment indoors, so he would have spent most of his time playing out of doors with other kids from the surrounding streets when not in school. In the decades before parental anxiety became the norm there wouldn't have been any adult supervision. I don't think that JKR acknowledges how au-fait he would have been with sixties and seventies English muggle culture._

 _The story takes place in Cokeworth at the end of the Hogwarts summer holidays in 1990._ _Severus_ _is_ _30 years old._ _Rated M for language,_ _drug references_ _and adult themes._

Severus completed a second set on the chest press. Merlin, this place stank of sweat. Sweat and liniment. The walls were permeated with the stuff. The gym had seen better days but it suited Severus' purposes. He'd started coming here a few years ago during the summer holidays while he was resident at Spinners End. Keeping fit for the traumas to come if Dumbledore was right about the Dark Lord returning. But really he'd been bored and wanted something to occupy him and pass the time through the long vacation. Keep him from dwelling on the past and the inevitable descent into the bottle that would follow. He must have walked past the entrance a hundred times without giving it a thought. Then one grey, cool, damp northern summer's day, at a loose end, he stepped inside.

And here he was in a faded black tee-shirt and sweat pants pumping iron. Severus chuckled to himself at the image that conjured inside his head. Pumping iron, ha! Whatever would Minerva and his other colleagues think if they could see him working out in a muggle gym. Never mind Lucius. Mind you, Poppy would probably approve. Once she worked out what he was doing that is. Severus smirked at that thought.

Billy who ran the gym gave him a nod as he wandered past. He was a broken-nosed ex-pug. One of those guys with no neck. Reminded him of Goyle senior. He ran a boxing club for the local youths and the gym included a ring. He had tried to get Severus to spar a few times but so far he'd always refused. Maybe he'd give it a go.

The club was meant to keep the local kids out of trouble and it received financial support from the local council for this endeavour. Kids like some of those Severus used to know. Severus had by no means been the only deprived, neglected child in Cokeworth, or indeed Spinners End. There were a few of them that Severus had gravitated towards in muggle primary school before he went to Hogwarts. He'd also kept up with them in the holidays away from Hogwarts until he finished there and his decisions took him away from Cokeworth for good.

Davy had been the lad he was closest to. A little runt of a skinhead with shiny red DMs when he first met him. He'd been so proud of those DMs. Davy who'd introduced him at a tender age to fags and wank mags. Lily thought he was a "wrong un". Mind you she thought all the other lads he got on with were "wrong uns" as well. No change there then he thought bitterly. There again she was probably right. Davy called Lily a "stuck up cow". He was probably right too.

As they got older booze and pills followed the fags and mags as Davy's choice of entertainment. Unlike the fags and booze, the pills never worked for Severus. Something to do with wizard bio-chemistry. Davy also introduced him to muggle music, first glam in his early years at Hogwarts, and then more notably, the punk and new wave bands that flowered in the years after he lost Lily. You could just make out the words Joy Division on his black tee-shirt, a gift from Davy years ago. Poor Davy, long gone. Choked on his own vomit when he miscalculated his intake of pills and a half bottle of White Horse. That had hurt. Not the soul aching agony of Lily's passing, but it hurt hard all the same. Like a little bit more of him had been lost.

"You owe me Sev, you owe me". I can still hear his voice. He had a deep bruise on his jaw and a cut on his cheek along with a black eye. He'd rolled up his shirt and shown me more bruises on his ribs and stomach. Some of them actually shaped like boot prints. Much against my better judgement he'd persuaded me to go with him to see City play Leeds. It was during the Easter break the year after Lily stopped talking to me. I'd told him that my long hair might be a problem with his skinhead mates. "No Sev, you'll be alright with me, I'll look after you". I admit I was curious as I'd never been to a game before. Turns out I wasn't the problem.

The game was something else. You couldn't hear yourself think. The chanting and singing along with the roar of anticipation or appreciation bounced off the stand roof and filled all the space around. Packed in, unable to move you fell forwards down the terrace with the crowd's movement and then it pulled you back. I was shitting myself until I realised I couldn't fall. Someone would grab you and pull you up. You became part of the crowd. Invincible. Shouting, chanting and hollering. It was as good as the feel of magic. I hid that memory buried hundreds of layers deep in my mind in the years to come.

After the game we were making our way to the station through the back to back terraced streets around the ground when he was hailed by a bunch of skins I didn't recognise. "Run" was all Davy said before taking off. We legged it through the back streets. I didn't even know where I was going. I was beginning to tire when he shouted at me to split up. He went down one street and I another. Our pursuers followed him. They kicked seven shades of shit out of him the poor sod. He'd crossed them over something. He never told me what.

Anyway in Davy's mind his sacrifice meant that I owed him. He wanted me to go to Amsterdam with him in the summer. In the end I gave in and said yes. I had to borrow his passport to make a duplicate with the _gemini_ spell. Some nifty transfiguration work added my photograph and details. I did this back at Hogwarts in the summer term. Davy was well impressed thinking I had the criminal connections to get fake passports made.

Amsterdam was fun. We took the ferry from Harwich to Hook. I returned home without my virginity which was good, but also with some minor brain damage. Not so good. We'd just hung out with boys and girls we met, slept in squats and smoked and drank our days away. One night we'd gone to a place near Vondel Park to buy some hash. The guy suggested that we try some sort of mushroom he had. Don't know what it was. It was large enough for him to carve a slice off it with a bread knife. I asked him how much to take to which he just shrugged. We divided it between ourselves. The stupidity of youth.

I must have lost two days. No idea what we did. I can remember being surrounded by black and white bats whirling around my head while I clung to a bed that was heaving up and down. When I finally came down I couldn't speak. I could see the words in my head but when I tried to say them nothing came out. It was like I'd forgotten how to talk. I thought that I'd really fucked up. I thought that I'd fucked my head. Much to my relief speech came back to me over the next few hours. We didn't stay long after that. I was itching to get home to my wand to see if I could still do magic because the lingering effects of the mushroom was preying on my mind.

Fortunately there didn't appear to be any impact on my magic although worryingly I did suffer flashbacks for several months even after I'd returned to Hogwarts. The last time Lily ever spoke to me was during a flashback. It was after one of Slughorn's lessons. I'd dawdled cleaning up my potions station and had just left the classroom when the floor went from under me. At first I thought that Potter or Black had hexed me but as a portrait melted down the wall I realised I was having a flashback. I was clinging to the wall trying to occlude hoping to shove it behind my mental barriers when Lily came out of the classroom. She'd been asking Slughorn something after the lesson finished.

Normally she'd have blanked me and just walked past without even a glance but she must have noticed I was in some distress. "Snape" she said sharply "is something wrong"? I was losing my battle with the hallucinations as my attempt at occlusion disintegrated. I could feel I was sweating and I guess I'd probably gone a shade paler than my normal corpse like pallor. I'd learnt from previous experience when this happened one just had to wait it out, preferably a little less publicly than now. As I slid down the wall and dropped my head into my hands the only response I managed was a single 'fuck'.

Lily was starting to fuss now, a note of panic entering her voice. "I'll go and get Madame Pomfrey". I managed a "No don't". "Severus don't be silly, you're not well". That was the first time she had used my given name since our row. In the dark watches of the night how I had longed for that. I didn't want Pomfrey looking through my head in my current state. "Just let me be, I'll be alright". She huffed and with a "suit yourself Snape" she was gone. Behind the privacy of my wards and bed curtains I wept that night. I only ever cried once more four years later on All Hallows' Eve.

Like Davy, the other boys were mostly gone now as well. Some had even managed to get out of Cokeworth. Some had been in and out of prison. One stabbed to death over a dispute in a chip shop. Stabbed in a chip shop. You couldn't make it up. Merlin, Cokeworth was a fuckin khazi. To think he had spent so many afternoons talking to Lily about how they were both going to get out of Cokeworth. She had he supposed. But not in the way they'd wanted. Not then. And he was still here.

He had Hogwarts he thought morosely. That promised world of magic and wonder that he and Lily so much looked forward to as children. But in the end it turned out to be just a khazi of another kind. A khazi he was now trapped in. Suddenly unsettled by his gloomy turn of thoughts Severus decided to finish his session. He needed a ciggie. He turned off the old Walkman he had listened to in the gym and pocketed it. Another gift from Davy that was no doubt stolen. Glad to get outside he headed towards the park where he'd first met Lily. If there were no kids about he'd go and sit on the swings and smoke.

Albus hated his smoking habit. More reason to pursue it. Mind you Albus was a sly one. He'd keep bringing into the conversation that Sirius Black had liked a fag. Thought he'd cure me of the habit by associating it with that arsehole Black, or more likely he just wanted to needle me. Black had smoked because it's muggle connection pissed off his stuck up pure blood family. I'd had my first fag with Davy down by the river when I was nine. He'd probably nicked them from his dad.

We'd also competed in trying to hit a can floating in the river with our pee. Can't imagine Potter and Black ever doing that. Sucking each other's cocks maybe. How Lily never twigged is beyond me. Her gaydar was clearly not working. Severus briefly entertained himself with a fancy about Lily coming upon her husband with Black buried deep in his arse imagining the look of horror on her face. But the thought quickly faltered and broke. He had never been able to hate Lily for more than a few moments.

He needed to think about what really was nagging at the edge of his calm. The Potter spawn who was going to arrive at Hogwarts in a years time. Lily's boy. Jesus, some higher being, whether muggle or magical, wasn't happy unless he was pissing on Severus Snape. He sighed and lit up taking a deep inhalation and releasing the smoke through his nose. Let the nicotine rush fill his head. Gently pushing the swing back and forth he let his feet drag along the ground. He flicked the Walkman on, his eyes unfocusing as he stared out across the park. _"Every day's like Sunday. Every day's silent and_ _grey_ _"_. Every day is silent and so, so, so fuckin grey. When he finished the fag he'd go down the Spinners Arms and see if he could score some dope.

 _Notes_

 _The slang and references used in this story are accurate to the place and time as far as I remember. I've assumed Cokeworth is either part of, or close to the Greater Manchester conurbation._

 _DMs refer to Doc Martins the footwear of choice for the skinhead fraternity in the UK in the 1960's and 70's. They were also known as cherry reds where I come from in North East England. The average skin prided himself on his boots and some were polished so fine they shone like mirrors. The real hard boys spray painted their's silver or gold._

 _Fags as many of our US friends find amusing has long referred to cigarettes in the UK. White Horse was and still is a UK brand of blended whiskey._

 _Manchester City played Leeds United in the First Division of the Football League on 8/4/76 (UK notation) at Maine Road winning 2:1. If you attended association football games and stood in the ends at the big club grounds before Heysel and the Bradford City fire and compulsory seating you will understand Severus' experience and feelings about being part of a football crowd._

 _A chip shop refers to the fish and chip shop the staple British takeaway before the influx of the Chinese, Indian, Pizza, and other myriad foreign food outlets you find today._

 _A khazi is slang for a toilet or more rudely a shithouse._

 _I did wonder whether Severus would have used the expression 'gaydar'. But a little research says that it was first referenced by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) in 1982 so I think it fair game._

 _The lyrics quoted in the last paragraph come from the 1988 song written by Morrisey after he'd left the Smiths 'Everyday is like Sunday'. It's likely difficult for anyone born after 1970 to understand the sentiments expressed in this song but it perfectly captures what Sundays were like for anyone over the age of 12 growing up in the sixties and seventies UK._

 _The Spinners Arms was (or maybe still is) a pub in Hulme, South Manchester notorious for drugs in the 1970's. Nico of Velvet Underground fame was searched by the police one time there. Serediptiously it fits with JKR's Spinners End ._


End file.
